asure. They won a specious imitation, so soiled and stained, however,
that many of the wisest among them could not at once detect its nature.
They played with the coarse bawble for a time, then lost it in a sea of
blood.

Doubtless the tempest that broke upon France had long been gathering.
The rays that emanated from such false suns as Voltaire and Rousseau had
already drawn up a moral miasma from the swamps of sensual ignorance:
under the shade of a worthless government these noxious mists collected
into the clouds from whence the desolating storm of the Revolution
burst. It was, however, the example of popular success in the New World,
and the republican training of a portion of the French army during the
American contest, that finally accelerated the course of events. A
generation before the "Declaration of Independence" the struggle between
the rival systems of Canada and New England had been watched by thinking
men in Europe with deep interest, and the importance to mankind of its
issue was fully felt. While France mourned the defeat of her armies and
the loss of her magnificent colony, the keen-sighted philosopher of
Ferney gave a banquet to celebrate the British triumph at Quebec, not as
the triumph of England over France, but as that of freedom over
despotism.[1]

The overthrow of French by British power in America was not the effect
of mere military superiority. The balance of general success and glory
in the field is no more than shared with the conquered people. The
morbid national vanity, which finds no delight but in the triumphs of
the sword, will shrink from the study of this checkered story. The
narrative of disastrous defeat and doubtful advantage must be endured
before we arrive at that of the brilliant victory which crowned our arms
with final success. We read with painful surprise of the rout and ruin
of regular British regiments by a crowd of Indian savages, and of the
bloody repulse of the most numerous army that had yet assembled round
our standards in America before a few weak French battalions and an
unfinished parapet.

For the first few years our prosecution of the Canadian war was marked
by a weakness little short of imbecility. The conduct of the troops was
indifferent, the tactics of the generals bad, and the schemes of the
minister worse. The coarse but powerful wit of Smollett and Fielding,
and the keen sarcasms of "Chrysal," convey to us no very exalted idea of
the composition of the